Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
13.03.2014 - 26.04.2014
The 99, Grannan’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery, is the result of three years of work in the Central Valley, in which she revisits the region of Dorothea Lange’s work in California during the Great Depression. The exhibition features new, large-scale color portraits contextualized by black-and-white vistas, and is accompanied by a two-volume publication.
© Anonymous, Modesto, CA, 2013
Grannan’s new work is set in the parched landscape and forgotten towns along Highway 99, including Modesto, Fresno and Bakersfield. In her intensely vivid color portraits, the artist works at midday when the sun is direct and the heat is unrelenting, presenting each individual, often simultaneously heroic and vulnerable, against stark, white backgrounds.
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In the black-and-white photographs, many of her subjects re-appear on Modesto’s South 9th Street and along the banks of the Tuolumne River. Everyday rituals, small interactions and moments of beauty on the fringes of society are depicted in detail, conferring significance to what is often overlooked.
© Deb soaking wet, Tuolumne River, Modesto, CA, 2013
Katy Grannan (b. 1969, Arlington, Massachusetts) was first recognized in 1998 for an intimate series of portraits of strangers she met through newspaper advertisements. Grannan worked for years throughout the northeast and produced several different series entitled Poughkeepsie Journal, Morning Call, Sugar Camp Road, and Mystic Lake, each referring to a local newspaper source or secluded location. Grannan’s process and the consequent images are informed by her own conflicted childhood in the American northeast. Each photograph is imbued with secrecy, desire, and hidden intentions.
© Inessa waits near South 9th Street, Modesto, CA, 2012
With her move to California in 2006, Grannan photographed “new pioneers,” people who, like herself, encountered something very different from the mythological “West” with its promise of eternal summer and personal reinvention. Instead, these new settlers face the end of a continent and the potential for failure as they struggle to define themselves under the scrutiny of the relentless Western sunlight. The Westerns explores the relationship between aspiration and delusion – where our shared desire to be of worth, to be paid some attention – confronts the uneasy prospect of anonymity.
© Gail and Dale, Pacifica (I), 2007 from the series The Westerns
Grannan’s Boulevard marked the beginning of a lengthy series of “street portraits.” These photographs appear to be made without the subjects’ knowledge, but are in fact, spontaneous collaborations between Grannan and strangers met on the streets of San Francisco and Hollywood (and later throughout the Central Valley). Boulevard and the subsequent series, 99, unfold as an enormous procession of humanity – a danse macabre of marginalized and powerless members of society. Grannan uses the ubiquitous white walls of city buildings and the glaring noon sunlight to serve as an impromptu, decontextualized backdrop that emphasizes each individual and defies any preconceived assumption of their “anonymity.” Grannan exhibited Boulevard at Fraenkel Gallery and Salon 94, New York in 2011. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) mounted a comprehensive exhibition of this series and a three channel video installation entitled The Believers in a two-person show in 2012, titled The Sun and Other Stars: Katy Grannan and Charlie White.
The 99, Grannan’s continuation of “street portraits” refers to Highway 99, which runs down the spine of California through the Central Valley – a place Joan Didion described as “the trail of an intention gone haywire.” Grannan followed Dorothea Lange’s trajectory (made famous in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men ) and discovered a similarly austere terrain and stoic sensibility. Grannan’s large black and white vistas describe a uniquely psychological landscape enveloping cities along Highway 99, where for most, the “American Dream” is pure myth. The region and its inhabitants remain overlooked and undervalued, yet there exists a quiet beauty in the seemingly mundane interactions among those living within this parched landscape.
© View of Stanislaus County from California Aqueduct Vista Point, Newman, CA, 2011
The Nine is the title of Grannan’s upcoming film about a marginalized and charismatic community in the Central Valley that struggles to find meaning and moments of grace in a hostile environment.
© Anonymous, San Francisco, 2010
There are three monographs of Grannan’s work: Model American, The Westerns, and Boulevard. Her photographs are included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. She lives and works in Berkeley, CA.
© Fraenkel Gallery | Kati Grannan